Can the Aussie P.M. kick arse?

OK, i'm unsure if my current bout of insomnia is making me gullible or what, so i might aswell throw this one out here. During my travels i came across This article.

Down the bottom in the paragraph entitled 'The beginning of Kyokushin' it mentions that John Howard (yes, the Prime Minister of Australia) is an honorary Godan in Kyokushin!

I can only find this info in this article which is strange because my search fu is usually quite strong. There's a few other pages but they're the same article copy/pasted.

I'm wondering if anyone has any more information on this? Anyone know the extent of his training previously (or even afterwards)? Is the whole thing just honorary bullshit? Is this even remotely true at all?

I find it hard to accept from one article, i look at john howard and see many things, kyokushin godan aint one of them.

"Honorary" could be he donated alot of $ or got support, or passed some law supporting the org or a million reasons. It has no relation to fighting ability.

The've been giving out those to people for a long time.The Jordanian Royal have a few because for a while they trained in Kyokushin.

So does Sean Connery for training Kyokushin for a while while he filmed "You only lived twice".From what i understand .Many of the "Ninjas" you see training at the castle were students from Oyama's own school.

It most probably was awarded my Shihan Cameron from Australia.At least that's who I think Howard received it from.

It doesn't mean that Howard can teach a class.Of course not.It's just publicity.Nothing more.

Honourary awards are purely that - honourary- you dont study or train at all to get them. A lot of people think honourary awards are bad for the integrity of institutions and only good as a marketing ploy.

Its like when Mike Tyson was given an honourary doctorate and he showed just how full of **** they are by saying:

"I don't know what kind of doctor I am. But watching all these beautiful sisters here...I'm debating whether I should be a gynecologist."